Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday June 04, 2012 @10:45AM
from the boy-wonder dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Sho Yano this week will become the youngest student to get an M.D. from University of Chicago. He was reading at age 2, writing by 3, and composing music by his 5th birthday. He graduated from Loyola University in three years — summa cum laude, no less. When he entered U. of C.'s prestigious Pritzker School of Medicine at 12, it was into one of the school's most rigorous programs, where students get both their doctorate and medical degrees. Intelligence is not Yano's only gift — though according to a test he took at age 4, his IQ is too high to accurately measure and is easily above genius level. He is an accomplished pianist who has performed at Ravinia, and he has a black belt in tae kwon do. Classmates and faculty described him as 'sweet' and 'humble,' a hardworking, Bach-adoring, Greek literature-quoting student. And in his own words, 'I may not be the most outgoing person, but I do like to be around people.'"

>Despite his gifts, success was not guaranteed. Several medical schools wanted no part of him because of maturity questions. Even at Pritzker, some faculty members worried they would be robbing him of a normal adolescence. On a college campus, he was a natural target for wisecracks. Some asked harsh questions about whether his mother was pushing him somewhere he didn't belong.

always good to hear that someone is excelling at a young age like this kid. i just hope he doesnt feel like he missed on life experiences later in life. i cant imagine if prodigies feel that they missed out on college-keggers, or proms or things like that.

Yeah, most of the best parts of college are not the classroom stuff at all. I feel sorry for people who miss out on that, as the social stuff is the one part of college you can't come back to 20 years later or even a few years earlier.

Yeah, most of the best parts of college are not the classroom stuff at all. I feel sorry for people who miss out on that, as the social stuff is the one part of college you can't come back to 20 years later or even a few years earlier.

That is so true -- and, in fact, I would say it applies much more to intellectual socialization than to things like frat parties and beer binges.

The social aspect of college seems to have shifted over recent decades to encompass more and more non-academic things. (Many studies have shown that students 50 years ago spent a lot more time studying, etc.) But many of the most important aspects of my intellectual development happened in college due to conversations I could have with peers, whether it was stuff related directly to class or random philosophical debates with the guy next door at 3am.

I imagine that it would be a lot harder for a pre-teen or young adolescent in a college to build up the kind of relationships with significantly older students that could result in such intellectual socialization.

This is just a random theory, but I've wondered whether a lot of the awkwardness and "weirdness" we see in prodigies -- and their frequent inability to continue success at the same level as adults -- isn't just because of the lack of normal emotional social skills, but rather because they don't tend to work closely enough with peers at the appropriate level who are working through similar problems as they learn material (even if they are a decade older). Most very young prodigies tend to be taught by adults who often have things sort of "figured out" (or they think they do), but I feel like I learned the most from conversations with other peers in college who were actively trying to figure stuff on the same level... that exploration seems to be an essential skill in moving from the great "absorbing" and problem-solving skills most prodigies possess to the ability to do more creative and productive work as an adult.

Or, to put it another way: eventually, there are no more math books with "challenge problems" in the back, and you need to have some sort of intellectual skills to figure out what to do after that, unless your greatest goal in life is to join MENSA and do puzzles all day. Having productive intellectual socialization with peers in college and graduate school seems, to me, to be one way you learn how to think about the sorts of problems the rest of the world might actually be interested in, once there are no more introverted "academic" challenges to complete.

always good to hear that someone is excelling at a young age like this kid. i just hope he doesnt feel like he missed on life experiences later in life. i cant imagine if prodigies feel that they missed out on college-keggers, or proms or things like that.

Yeah, not quite doogie howser. I mean much respect, 21 is young, but I still feel a little let down, he's not a teenager graduating from medical school like doogie so he's no doogie howser so the/. post is very misleading

Sounds like he's headed to spend the next five years as a pediatrician resident. What strikes me is this: After all the acceleration, does he end up simple having a professional career that's ten years longer than normal? Without some exceptional accomplishments along the way, it might not have been the best trade-off.

My father was someone like that, IQ literally off the charts, used by the University of Chicago to help calibrate IQ tests for people with IQ's over 200. Multiple degrees for the sake of multiple degrees, the whole nine yards. Did his buddy's doctorate thesis for his PhD in an unrelated field just to help him out, and his buddy is now a leading expert in his field. People's expectations were off the charts with how they how wanted to exploit him. His own expectations of himself and others became unfathomably high.

Had trouble his entire life connecting to normal people, even people of normal genius level intelligence had trouble relating with him. He thought so far ahead of everyone else that he even thought ahead of himself. When you spend so much time thinking past tomorrow you have trouble living for today. The result was this life was a mess and the practical details of his life were something that I often had to to take care of for him.

Being a genius is an accident of birth, being a genius compared to other geniuses is arguably more of a curse than a gift. In the end the longer he lived the more he learned to dumb himself down when around others. It was a social survival skill. I do not envy the person in this article.

Long answer: News is "new". It isn't news whatever breathroughs in art, science that Bach or Newton did as it isnt' new. What is being reported on is the novelty of his early graduation, not a prediction of his potential future contributions to society or his IQ (which is merely background filler material for an article). Since his graduation is happening now and it's apparently noteworthy and new, therefore it "news". It wouldn't be news if you reported on his IQ after he took

But he'd much rather talk about his upcoming residency in pediatric neurology, which will dominate the next five years of his professional life. He became enamored of the field while doing a rotation at LaRabida Children's Hospital in Chicago, caring for patients with cerebral palsy, shaken baby syndrome and other ailments.

"I really liked not just taking care of kids, but the way the whole team worked together - the medical team, the social workers, nutritionists, DCFS w

Actually, if you look at the statistics for lung cancer [about.com] you'll see quite the opposite. 24.4% of male, heavy (5 cigarettes per day) smokers end up with lung cancer. I don't even equate 5 cigarettes as heavy, as just about everyone I've ever known who smoked, did at least 5 a day, and many did a whole pack (20-25) cigarettes a day. That doesn't even account for all the other bad things that smoking can give you. That's just a single disease. The signs at the checkout at the grocery store state that 1 in

This kid will need two things for his output to match his promise. The first is the ability to cope, and the second is the opportunity to make a difference at some point. He can learn the skills to cope, but opportunity may be more difficult to come by.

I would agree with this, in sixth grade my reading skills were measured as 'beyond college' and my math skills were 'college level'. However my school had been reteaching me the same set of things for like four years and I was bored to tears. By the time I did go to college my love of learning had worn off and I didn't really care about pleasing teachers or scoring particularly high. I had already started working in my field though during high school, so I had some idea of what I planned to do. That alone is better than most people I see come to college as undeclared and then they ramble about taking random classes for the next 4 or 5 years.

Similar situation to me. By the time I was in 8th grade, my literature/reading instructor gave up and just sent me off to the library to write on Fridays when everyone else was doing reading comprehension instruction. Unfortunately, the school system didn't permit skipping grades without unanimous approval from teachers as well as parental consent, and my mother thought I'd be better off simply trying for one of the specialty magnet schools in town for high school. She was probably right, as far as socia

This always struck me as odd. When I was in school it always felt to me like I could finish all the learning for each year in a couple of months if only I was allowed to do so. But instead I had to sit there while the teacher went over each thing a dozen times, and then reviewed it a dozen more. And you couldn't read ahead because you'd be told that the class hadn't got there yet. One of my friends in grade 7 gave up and taught himself calculus during math class, the teacher didn't dare stop him, but neither did he allow him to complete a single assignment or test before the requisite time, nor could he advance to the next grade early (despite the fact that he was already working himself 5-6 grades ahead of the class)And yet despite this you see stories like this from time to time where someone manages, despite the system, to come out ahead. Personally I want to know how they managed to get through the school system before the age of 18. The system which seems designed more to keep young people off the streets than it is to educate them.

I always felt the same way. I had an algebra 2 course that offered extra credit for work in the final two chapters, which we werent going to go over in class. This was supposed to be done throughout the semester, and turned in during the last week just in case you needed a few points. I turned in the entire section by the end of week 2, but the teacher never let me do anything interesting even after I showed initiative. I sat there while she literally read the book to us, and then got bad grades on homework

And you couldn't read ahead because you'd be told that the class hadn't got there yet. One of my friends in grade 7 gave up and taught himself calculus during math class, the teacher didn't dare stop him, but neither did he allow him to complete a single assignment or test before the requisite time, nor could he advance to the next grade early (despite the fact that he was already working himself 5-6 grades ahead of the class)

Our standard system is broken, since in the name of "socialization" we require students to stay with other kids at almost exactly the same age. (Of course, the fact that socialization skills and social maturity advances at vastly different rates in different kids doesn't seem to bother anyone, let alone the academic abilities.)

Nevertheless, there are many strategies for students "stuck" in scenarios like that. In math classes, to take your example, I found working on the "extra exercises" and "challenge problems" to be a useful diversion, and teachers were generally happy to discuss them before/after class, since most teachers like motivated kids, and it's not a lot of extra work to look in their teacher's manual to see the solution.

I found that most teachers were actually pretty accommodating and left me alone to do whatever I wanted to during class, once they realized I already knew the answers to most everything... it would have been more annoying and more disruptive to the class if I were trying to be actively engaged asking challenging questions or keeping other kids from offering answers.

At some point the "challenge problems" became rather boring, so I started working on calculus some years ahead of time during math classes. I'd just bring the book and work on those problems myself while the class did whatever it was doing. When I started asking the teacher questions, he could answer some of them, but eventually he just referred me to the calculus teacher, who was quite helpful and met with me a few times to discuss some problems and concepts.

I know quite a few people who had similar experiences -- the key for kids stuck in such a situation is to encourage them to keep doing their own independent work and not to be afraid of asking teachers about the stuff outside of normal class time. While some teachers were more helpful to me than others, I remember very few who didn't seem thrilled to discuss more advanced topics with me for a few minutes outside of class when they were free.

And as someone who has gone on to teach, I can say that such students often are the best part of your day -- many times, they'll ask questions that will get you to think about stuff in new ways, even if it's dealing with very fundamental topics.

There are really bad parts to our educational system, but someone with the right attitude and motivation can still end up arriving at college well ahead of the pack, even if a few years later than they might have in a more ideal world.

because you were effectively ostracized by being significantly younger during middle/high school is not amusing.

Teenagers are cruel, they always have been, and probably always will be. That said, it seems likely that they pick on people who have skipped grades mainly because it is so uncommon. If our education system was completely goal oriented, instead of age oriented, there would always be a mix of various ages in every class, and that particular excuse for picking on kids wouldn't be as likely (I'm not going to pretend that it would stop kids from picking on other kids, but I don't think age would be such an issu

Outside of my foreign language classes, there were maybe two or three courses that seemed to actually need all the time allotted them.

Then there were the first year classes that were just a review of grades 7 (!!!) to 12. If I'd known better I'd have just tested out of them, but by the time I wised up it was too late for most of 'em. Didn't even occur to me beforehand that non-remedial college courses might just be a review of junior high and high school material.

One of my friends in grade 7 gave up and taught himself calculus during math class

LOL I did the exact same thing at the same age, picked up a calc book, started reading, liked it. Calc is believed to be exotic and complicated such that none of it can be learned until university, however 50% of it can be learned at a pretty low educational level. To learn 100% of calc requires the full preparation, but 50% is possible at a pretty early age. How hard is it to explain the geometric concept of a first, second, third, etc derivative to a reasonably bright gradeschool kid? The limit defini

I was like that and now my son is like that (tuned out of class, far ahead of our peers in knowledge and understanding). I gave him some college level tests and he actually did better than me on one of them. Needless to say, he passed all of them. I can NOT get my son accelerated. They just want to fail him and hold him back because he has completely tuned out because of how painfully repetitive and stupid it all is. I have tried turning it into a self-discipline game

You would need special schools and to set up qualifications to get into them and remain in them. This appears to be unacceptable in an egalitarian society and it is doubly unacceptable in one filled with jealousy and people who want their kids to be seen as "smart". Since rich people have the ability to buy their way in, where other parents do not, you end up with high end schools with a certain number of kids whose parents are simply rich, and this only makes the egalitarian sorts even more against separate schooling.

The public school system is not there to teach geniuses, it's there to provide a basic standard of education to everyone. Perhaps we should let the smart kids out sooner, but again it becomes a matter of jealousy and things like that. Do not underestimate the deadening effect of "democratic values" on certain things.

The whole grade-level system needs to be thrown out. A better system would be to have a year-round trimester, with courses designed to cover material quickly and be taken twice by most people. The quick studies will be out in one term, and some people might stay for three. You advance in each subject independent of the others (except where dependencies are involved, like physics needing calculus), and when your current instructor thinks you're ready for the next step.

If they had done that to me, in 5th-6th grade, I would have gone into your "general" category because my grades were subpar and I refused to do my homework. Since they held off, I ended up going to a very good university because I graduated in the top 5% of my class. I don't like holding smart kids back, because I was one, but college is very, very far away for a 5th or 6th grader and you can't expect them to be acting in they will when it starts becoming a reality. As it stands, at that age, it is almos

Perhaps you just don't hear about their childhoods after they've found success, but I always hear stories about these geniuses graduated X years early, but rarely about their professional accomplishments.

That's because in this day, hard work and dedication is almost distinguishable from intellect. I mentioned this in a post below, but I knew 3 people who graduated college at 17/18, and then went on to do nothing. I had very close interactions with one, and he was the laziest person I'd ever met... basically graduated college and figured he had proven himself, without realizing that's when then real work begins.

Yes. Its all about resources. The smartest kids can do great things, but science has gotten to the point that it needs some very pricey tools to actually run experiments. Corporations are the only sorts who can afford those things, and they are going to be uninterested in making one of their researchers into some sort of prima donna unless they can avoid it, or profit off of it.

Am I the only one who thinks that such a genius is bound to make major leaps in whatever field he invests himself in?

As such, the path he has chosen is good news for diseased children. However, humanity as a species isn't affected by those personnal tragedies he decided to focus on. On the other hand, there's a number of subjects in physics, genetics or even medecine that could have had a much wider impact.

Yes, I'm aware such a way of thinking classifies into the cold-hearted bastards category.

I understand your comment. But think of it like this: children get sick with a lot of the same diseases adults get. What if this guy says, "You know what, on my weekends, after my round of banging supermodels after blowing their clothes off with my mind, I'm going to kick cancer's ass. 'Cause what pisses me off more than anything is to have to tell a seven-year-old they probably aren't going to make it to nine." Or what if he comes up with a new surgical procedure that makes it easier to fix some congen

What he's shown so far - and admirably well, evidently - is that he can master what's already known. We have no idea what he can come up with on his own. No slagging on the kid, but, at this point, he's just a walking bio-encyclopedia: he has facts, but we don't know if he has "wisdom." The ability to store all of those bits of information does not directly correlate into the ability to make something from them. We'll have to wait and see how he does.

He will only work to his full potential in fields that interest him. Insofar as that may well be a waste of time, it is a shame, but I don't think there is much that anyone can do about it. He is not going to make breakthroughs in a field that bores him or he feels nothing for.

When it comes down to it, there is no need for someone who is more efficient than two other people, because you can always hire two or three more people. What people like this are needed for is to make discoveries that are not simp

I'd almost prefer him go into music... none of my business of course... it's just that exceptional people probably do the most good doing something creative. Be that expanding our understanding in science or advancing something in one of the arts or inventing something in some form of engineering.

He's a 21 year old kid that has spent a lot of his time hitting the books harder then anyone. And he can do whatever wants. The best of luck to him.

I don't know any genius level people, but I know 3 who were fast-tracked through high school and graduated very prestigious colleges at 17/18. They all went on to get PhDs, and they all failed out for the same reason: sometime during their PhD they wanted to try to re-live their youth as they should have, and began acting like teenagers again again. Drinking, partying, getting in trouble.... these guys were the smartest guys I knew, but each one, on their own, managed to derail their careers because they completely missed their youth.

Not saying this kid is in any danger of going down the same path... maybe his massive intellect will divert him from temptation. But every time I hear about someone graduating college exceedingly young, I always wonder when their fuse is going to run out.

You think you're being funny, but we had a psychology professor at our university who got the university to fund his research project on the state of mind of a middle aged man sailing around the world. And yes, he was his own research subject, as he sailed around the world. No, I really don't think it's possible for someone to be introspective enough to write a scientific paper on their own state of mind.

I'm reading now "Emotional Intelligence" and this book talks about how only the IQ is not the only key to success in life. There is also some information about how persons IQ-centric often lack some social skills

Even Albert Einstein got a divorce. I think whatever gifts this young man has will be dogged and encumbered by being labeled a sideshow freak--even in the best possible way. Look at the biography of William Sidis. Even taking into account the myth-making of genius/madness, I see little benefit of being a prodigy, but I see a lot of attention addiction and other maladies that may choke out a fulfilled and happy life.

I'm familiar with some of those criticisms. Stephen Jay Gould is perhaps one of the most prominent ones. Unfortunately Gould himself has been discredited when it was recently (1-2 years ago IIRC) that he was basically making up stuff in "Mismeasure".

Some of the other people think that 'g' is too restrictive of a measurement and misses out on some other aspects of cognition. While I agree to some extent that there is more to us than just mere g, g itself (as proxied by IQ scores) has been shown to be an extr

You can come up with basically any test and intelligent people will get high scores on it. Intelligence means general problem-solving skills, and intelligent paople will perform better than average under any conditions. The problem with IQ is not that it gives low scores to intelligent people, but that it has a large number of false positives, and that is basically unreliable in accurately measuring average people.

I do wish people would stop using that as some sort of gauge of intelligence - it has very little to do with intelligence, and just modernity.

Sure, but the only thing worse than an IQ test is every other form of intelligence measure. Claiming that the test has issues (it does) should not be used to divert attention from the fact that some people are very smart while others are mind-bogglingly stupid.

It's like saying that thermometers suck because they don't account for wind chill, humidex, UV exposure or different peoples' metabolism. You may be correct, but I'm still going to check the temperature before going outside.

Even if IQ was the best method doesn't mean that we should rely on it as a precise measurement of intelligence. Maybe intelligence is too variable, complex and human to be measured in a single number? Just because current weather forecast is the best we have, I'm not going to leave my water-sensitive stuff in the garden for weeks even if they don't predict rain, because I know that it's not that accurate.

"Maybe intelligence is too variable, complex and human to be measured in a single number?"

Anything can be measured in a single number, the question is 'how useful and predictive' is this number? With IQ, the empirical answer is "reasonably but not universally predictive".

There actually is a technical point behind IQ. If you measure performance across all sorts of cognitive (and sometimes other) aspects, appropriately normalize the subscores and then look at the principal component (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_component_analysis) across large samples of individuals you observe a phenomenon: a significant (though not total) fraction of the variance can be explained by the single, largest principal component called 'g' in psychometric literature. This phenomenon did not have to be true empirically, but it is, and the degree to which it is true is also quantifiable.

In a nutshell, people who perform high or low on some subsets are also substantially more likely to perform high or low on other cognitively-oriented subtasks.

So, yes, "intelligence" does mean something and is a fact of Nature. Note, that of course, the subjects typically tested on an 'IQ' test have now been post-hoc chosen to be those which have high g-loading, i.e. are substantially correlated within individuals.

If the typically tested tasks had also included, for instance *) ability to sing on tune *) ability to catch thrown balls while running, *) ability to distinguish odors *) ability to discern emotions in faces, etc, all of which clearly require brainpower, their "loading on the principal component of IQ" would be substantially weaker than the correlation between performance on predicting numerical sequences and analogies in natural language.

I don't think there are stupid people. Just people who are smart in different ways,[...]

Someone clearly didn't work in tech support when he/she was younger.

Six months of that and it should be pretty clear to anyone with a couple of neurons still firing that yes, there are stupid people. In fact, stupid people are very likely to call tech support, not just because their internet connection is down but because the power is out, they don't like their neighbor or they just plain feel like yelling profanities at someone who works for a company they have no relationship to.

So you've proven that a thermometer provides inadequate data to make the decision on how to plan one's dress for the day.

You've then implied that perhaps IQ tests as measuring tools are similarly faulty.

But surely your solution to this is not to abandon thermometers in favor of other measurements exclusively? Surely the correct thing to do is to use thermometers in concert with the other data they cannot provide. Much as is done in practice in meteorology today.

And if that *is* the correct approach, how does it discredit the use of IQ tests? Would they not continue to be appropriate for use (assuming the analogy is a valid one) in concert with other data that they cannot measure, just as thermometers are?

Does this not support Lev13than's ultimate point that the test may not provide all desirable useful data, but it none the less still provides useful data?

Except for, you know, all the things the IQ predicts with strong correlation. You know, useful extrapolation, a fundamental tenant of science. Within that category of things, there's all sorts of things IQ is useful as a predictive gauge for:*Productivity of new employees without previous experience in the field*Income(up until about IQ 120, where huge diminishing returns take effect)*Crime rates and recidivism rates*Lifespan*Chance of acquiring an advanced degree*Political views

You know, other than all those major, life-impacting things, IQ doesn't predict anything.

I believe judging an individual on a single characteristic is both pointless and wrong. I just take issue with the meme that IQ is somehow irrelevant or useless as a means to understanding human intelligence. It reflects an ignorance of the observed reality we live in.

What is generally recognized though is that the accuracy of the test also diminishes at greater than 120. Richard Feynman had an IQ of 'only' 125.http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CGIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRichard_Feynman&ei=re7MT9foDIKE8ATci_2lDg&usg=AFQjCNFlZ7QHTlH2GfvFMOBQXefQcbolfQ

IQ tests like many forms of test is a way to quantify peoples abilities. People with High measured IQ tend to be more intelligent then people with low IQ. However there are a lot of factors that goes into be an intelligent or a mentally useful person. However the IQ is a form of measurement, and chances are your performance will coincide with the standard distribution level you are in.

The last time I was formally tested for my IQ I was in middle school, they did it not to rate how smart each child is, but

Other luck-based factors are things like when you start your company (the timing feels sort of right but is the market really ready for your product? or maybe you've already missed the boat? This obviously isn't all luck but to a large degree it is, sometimes the difference between the winner and the also ran can be that the winner had a slightly crappier product but ever so slightly better timing) and minor marketing choices (your research shows both advertisi

If he's that bright, he'll be earning mad money before he's 25. If he's earning 100k+ by that age, he'll be driving a Porsche and banging chicks like a rock star.

Sorry, but that easily replaces a childhood with toys.

What's sad is that you identify this kid as sad because he was rushed to adulthood, when there are millions of kids also robbed of their childhood because of poverty, and a lack of opportunity to advance like this kid did, simply because they were born into some shithole.

And that shithole could even be in the USA -- many areas of this country are devastated by crime and poverty -- some kids don't even get to make it to his age, they are killed by stray gunfire, or in some even worse places (in the third world), sold off to slavers, or turned into child soldiers. Other kids here in the USA join gangs because there is no other choice.

If he makes good money while he's young enough to enjoy it, it will trump any and all childhood 'play'. Don't be sad for this kid, turn your empathy towards those that actually need it.